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Sunday, 3 March 2013

The Value We Put On Words Part II/Writing For Free

At the end of last month’s post on the value of words, I left myself with a
challenge, which was to explore the idea of writing for free. If the labourer was worthy of their hire [and the author of their crust] when and why and who, in particular, would be so crazy as to give away words?

I guess I started out thinking that fat cat authors, earning a
good living out of his/her books, would be more likely candidates for giving stuff away than bone-rattlingly thin authors who couldn’t live unless their every
word was made to pay. The more I thought about it, however, the less that seemed the case and the reason for this, I decided, was that the
commodity in question was writing and, when it comes to writing, money’s never been the only
point.

The fat cat authors don’t
need to give away because they're already achieving one of their main objectives, which is to be heard. However, stick-thin authors, as witnessed by their rattling bones, aren't selling [in other words being heard] and are therefore more susceptible to giving away.

The trouble is, if you're a stick-thin author who wants to stand by your principles and not go down the
free giveaway road – where else can you go?For my own part, when I want to be heard, no matter whether my words are paid for or not, I go online.I'm doing it now, writing my once-a-month ABBA
post.On Authors Electric too, I write about my adventures in the world off e-publishing. Then I blog on my website about the writer’s
life.

And then, of course,
there’s My Tonight From Shrewsbury.

My Tonight From Shrewsbury started this January. It’s a slice of life in my home town. What I
aimed to do when I set out was get behind the doors of ordinary town life, tell
people’s stories, sharelittle-known nuggets of town history and write up a few local events
that marked the passing of the year. ‘Want to get to the heart of an English
country town,’ was my byline. ‘Here’s your chance.’ Nothing prepared me for the fact that in the first seven weeks alone, I'd have getting on for eight and a half thousand hits from across the
world.

The words people are
reading are for free, but they definitely fall into the category of getting oneself heard. Nobody’s
paying me to say the coffee shop on Castle Gates serves the best Americano in
town, or to get behind the closed doors of the High Street’s Unitarian
Church or to create Open Studios online for some of the town artists.When I write about the
tightrope walker who fell from St Mary’s Church spire to his death in the Great
Frost of 1739, I do so for no reason other than that it’s interesting - and
it’s interesting that there are still peopleclimbing the town’s domes and spires today. I’ve written
about them too, and shown their photographs.

If I’d been a paid
journalist, there are people I’ve intertviewed who’d never have talked to me.
And this adds a value to my writing that completely bypasses the concept of
monetary gain. I’m taking my free words out onto the streets and writing about
everything I find, from homeless schoolboys to market stall holders, doctors to
dentists, babies to brides.Sometimes the stories are there to raise a smile. Sometimes
they’re informative. Sometimes they’re saying things that couldn’t be said any
other way.

‘Words are cheap,’ says
writer Mark Frankland. ‘In fact,
once you have shelled out for a laptop and a copy of Microsoft Word, words are
free of charge. As many as you like, free at the point of delivery. Thank
Christ. Maybe at this very moment George Osborne is scheming away in 11 Downing
St – if only he could tax words at 5p a pop then the deficit problem would go
away very quickly!’

Indeed it would.After all, Mark Frankland and I aren’t
the only ones writing for free. The blogosphere’s teeming with new, fresh, free
words every day. All of my fellow contributor here on ABBA are giving their words freely, and
it’s not because we writers are obsessed with publicity. More than anything
else, it’s because we feel we have something to communicate, and we’re obsessed
with words as a means of doing it.

Years ago I read an article by the American children’s author Katherine Paterson on the subject of
heart-to-heart communication. Because what she says is fundamental to my
understanding ofwhat writing does
I’m forever quoting it, and now here I go again:

‘What happens is a
reciprocal gift between writer and reader: one heart in hiding reaching out to
another. We are trying to communicate that which lies in our deepest heart,
which has no words, whch can only be hinted at through the means of story. And
somehow, miraculously, a story that comes from deep in my heart calls from a
reader that which is deepest in his or her heart, and together from our secret
hidden selves we create a story that neither of us could have told alone.’

I know that Paterson is
talking primarily about fiction here, and the relationship between writers and
young readers, but what she says applies, I feel, to the written word in a
wider context too. After all, every time we put down words we’re creating some
kind of ‘story’. And to be able to do so is some kind of gift.

I’ve been thinking a lot
about gifts recently. In his book, The Gift, Lewis Hyde talks about the
compulsion the artist feels to make work and offer it to an audience, and the
dangers to be beset if the artist withholds that gift.It must stay in motion to survive, he writes. So long as it’s not
withheld, the creative spirit will remain what he calls a stranger to the
economics of scarcity. ‘The gift is not used up in use,’ he
writes.‘To have painted a
painting does not empty the vessel of which the painting comes. On the
contrary, it is the talent which is not in use that is lost or
atrophies.’

In there somewhere is a
manifesto for words for free. Not eked out by market forces but given
creatively in a spirit of generosity if not even love.Poet Pablo Neruda reckoned that his art
began with human interaction. It wasn’t from the spirits of the past that his
gift sprang, but from brotherhood - from the people - and he quite consciously
offered his poetry in recognition of that debt: ‘I have attempted to give something
resiny, earthlike and fragrant in exchange for human brotherhood,’ he
wrote.To find an unknown person
somewhere who had read his poems was its own reward.

Well, there you [sort of] have
it - my thinking so far.It’s taken me two long months
to work this out, and I'm sure I haven't finished yet. But so far as I've got, yes, readers should
buy books at prices that reflect their value and the value of their authors -
just as they should pay for any art. ‘The labourer is worthy of his hire’ and
all that jazz.But yes too, choosing
to make his/her words available for free is the writer’s prerogative [indeed
sometimes even duty, if the alternative is to not be heard]. And making that
choice, with clear objectives and for all the right reasons, is a world away from what I was talking about last month - the sort of free, market-led giveaways that are thrust upon authors as if no alternative exists. That should be
resisted at all costs.

6 comments:

This is true. I'm reminded of the Tao te Ching: The Tao, when used, is never emptied.So deep! It seems to be the source of all things.

The well of words, as long as we continue to tap it, is miraculously always forthcoming. But you add that the act of communicating provokes a response. To be human, we connect, and connect most with those of an honest and generous spirit.

Unfortunately, it's the urge to write and be heard that is exploited by those who encourage/expect writers to give their work for free - whether it's publishers offering pitiful deals or the rush to the bottom with self-epublishing.

I agree with you, that I will blog for myself, for ABBA and for guest blogs for free but everything else costs. It's worth thinking about it outside writing. A person who makes a living talking (lecturer, radio journalist, therapist) still has conversations for free, sometimes about their area of expertise.

The distinction is that the communicator/giver is in charge of the quality and extent of what is given. We choose to blog; our blog posts don't go through a copy editor, proof reader and picture researcher and we don't usually spend as much time on them as if they were paid for - though they have to be good enough not to bring us into disrepute.

But that doesn't mean *all* online writing should be unpaid or poorly paid...

Lovely post, thank you. It seems to me that very few people make a living just from writing - but many of us want to be heard, as you say. Maybe many of us want to be valued too, though there are other ways of being valued than being paid. I'm beginning to wonder why so many people want to write - it's something I don't quite understand, but I know I do, and always have done!